I was raised in West Jordan, Utah. My father and mother were dirt farmers, meaning we grew crops. And that’s probably where I got most of my energy that I have--that people accuse me of having--is from my father, getting up very early in the morning, and helping him change the water.
Steiger: What kind of crops did you grow?
Ote: Peas and corn and tomatoes and alfalfa--lots of alfalfa. Dry farming wheat and rye.
Steiger: How many brothers and sisters?
Ote: My older brother is four years older--Dennis. He was the truck person at Kennicott Copper, ran all the trucks, made sure they didn’t bump into each other. My sister, two years older, DeeAnn, she’s a realtor in Salt Lake City--very wealthy. My brother was the farmer, ended up farming with my father, ‘til my father died. And they actually sold their farm and went to Idaho. And myself, I ended up in college for a couple of years before I ran the river.
Steiger: What were you doing in college?
Ote: Trying to figure out what to be, trying to work on my personal legend, which I couldn’t find in college. So I started skiing and hiking, backpacking, ended up spending two summers in the Canadian Rockies, and then ended up on the river. Do you know Pete Gibbs? Pete Gibbs was the guy that made the Gibbs Ascender and sold it to the government and made a kajillion dollars. He worked for Grand Canyon Expeditions as a guide. He asked me and Bego [George Gerhardt], who I was with at the time, to go on a river trip, I think the year was 1972. The reason I can date that is because of Regan, because I met Regan that spring--March of 1972--at that little camp across the street from Deer Creek. Regan said that was his second year, and he started in ’71. Pete Gibbs asked Bego to climb the Grapevine Wall, and he asked if I could come along. So Pete told me I could go if I cooked for ‘em. And that very first night, I was cookin’ spaghetti down in the sand, stirrin’, and the wind was blowin’. And every time I would open the lid, sand would go in. So I served the spaghetti that night, and I was fired! I didn’t have to cook the rest of the trip!
Steiger: Now, the Grapevine Wall, meaning...?
Ote: That big granite dike. You run the rapid, and right below is that big dike on the right--huge Zoroaster dike. I spent two nights, three days, in the rocks, watching those guys climb it. It was mostly a bolting thing. Did I want to do it? No. Looked horrendous.
It was just the four of us: myself, Pete Gibbs, Bego, and one other guy. It was one little ten-man raft. Remember the ten-man rafts? I learned how to row on that trip.
Steiger: Wait a minute, the whole trip was one little ten-man raft? In March of 1972?
Ote: Yes.
Steiger: So how many other people did you see on that trip?
Ote: Well, we ran into the GCE trip down at Deer Creek. I think that was the only trip we ran into. That was early--that was an early trip for a commercial trip.
Steiger: So there were four of you, a ten-man raft, and you did this river trip just so those guys could climb the Grapevine Wall?
Ote: And I got to see the Grand Canyon for the first time! I think we did twelve days, counting the three days that we were there. So it was (indicates swift rush) through the canyon. There was no hiking.
Steiger: You went down there, climbed the wall ...
Ote: ... ran the river ...
Steiger: ... boated out. And you were fired as the cook on Day One! Not bad! So who did the cookin’ then?
Ote: Pete. He was the guide. Do you believe that? My first river trip, I had an actual commercial guide. He was a really good boatman. I never remember being scared at anything. I don’t even remember getting wet. It was cold. We didn’t have all that Patagonia gear yet. I remember being so blown away by the Grand Canyon, being so amazed that Pete Gibbs did it for a living, that he guided people through that canyon. I said, "This is what I want to do," and I quit college.
Steiger: What had you been studying?
Ote: Philosophy, education, party--serious party.
Steiger: Oh, yeah! 1972.
Ote: I was the party queen! I remember putting a big Agnew face on the clock. We were demonstrating against Nixon and that whole thing, and the Vietnam War.
Steiger: But growing up on a farm, your folks must have been pretty conservative.
Ote: My folks were very conservative. I was raised a Mormon, and at sixteen I decided I wasn’t going to be a Mormon, but I didn’t tell my parents that. I did know that I was not going to be that. They just didn’t answer the geological questions. They didn’t answer the dinosaurs. They didn’t give it to me straight, and I was like, "Something’s not right here." Went to college, took philosophy, read Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche, all those guys, and completely became--I think I was an atheist. Now I’m a pagan.
Steiger: It was geology that actually started you questioning your religion?
Ote: Somewhere I went to a museum and saw dinosaurs. I went, "Dinosaurs! Wow, they lived how many years ago, and what are they trying to tell me in this religion?" So it just didn’t work. Plus, when I went to college, I was drinkin’. Now, you can’t drink and be a Mormon--and a few other things.
Steiger: I guess not. I guess you’re goin’ to hell for sure if you do that.
Ote: Yeah. So my parents did not know, no. I tried to keep them in the dark about my wicked ways, but they finally figured it out. And they didn’t pay for my college after they figured it out. So I had to figure out what I was going to do to support myself. College wasn’t it.
Steiger: So what did you decide?
Ote: Well, I was with Bego at the time, so we moved to Moab, and we got a job with Grand Canyon Expeditions and Canyonlands--ran triple-rigs and sport-yak trips up on Desolation.
Steiger: This was after the Grand Canyon trip?
Ote: Yeah. We both wanted to be river runners. Bingo! Just like that. "This is what we’re gonna do." And we did it. That summer we went to work for Ron Smith and Canyonlands.
Steiger: So that was the summer of ’72? What was it like gettin’ a job with Ron Smith? Was that hard?
Ote: Ron Smith didn’t hire me--he never hired me. I worked for A.C. Ekker. I packed food and drove trucks and painted boats and swamped. Whenever I did a trip, it was swamping, except for in Desolation Canyon, where they hired me as a guide to take people through in those little sport-yaks. And that was probably the funnest year of guiding, because every single person has a boat, and you get to teach ‘em how to row, how to right ‘em, how to swim, all that. So much fun. I worked with a guy--what was his name?--Anderson! Naho Dockletts, and Bego. That’s how we got our names, the three of us. Naho is O.C. Dale’s sister, Debra Dale. N-A-H-O. We were on a trip together in Desolation Canyon with a bunch of people, and I read ‘em the story--the Navajo creation story--and in it there’s Begochiti, Naho Dockletts, and Coyote. And at the end of the story, the people decided that I was "Coyote", the trickster; Bego--George Gerhardt--was "Bego"--Begochiti; and Debra Dale was gonna be "Naho" Dockletts. And by the end of the trip, they’d shortened our names to Ote, Bego, and Naho, and those names stuck. From then on, that’s who we were. And that’s who they are now. He’s still Bego and she’s still Naho and I’m still Ote.
Steiger: So on that first trip, if we could go back to Grand Canyon, you met Regan across from Deer Creek?
Ote: Yeah, he was with Kent Vigas and he was running his own boat. It was his second season. What happened there? Oh, we just met. That’s about it. I was with somebody else, and he was with somebody else, I believe.
***
Steiger: So just tell me more about what sticks out for you about your early career and how that went.
Ote: I remember wanting to live in the Grand Canyon. That was all I wanted to do. And so that winter we did a trip with The Factor, Kenton Grua. We had two boats this time, and there were four of us: myself and Bego, and Foxy--remember Foxy?--and Kenton Grua, The Factor. We went through the Grand Canyon at Christmastime. Spent Christmas at Elves Chasm, and New Year’s Eve at Lava Falls.
Steiger: That’s winter of ’72-’73? And those guys were all workin’ for GCE?
Ote: Uh-huh, that’s how we knew each other. We’d met each other either in Canyonlands or in the Grand Canyon. That next summer, I swamped, I think it was eleven trips for Grand Canyon Expeditions, and learned how to run a motor rig--wanted my own motor rig--but they weren’t gonna hire me.
Steiger: How come?
Ote: You know, I never did figure that out, and I don’t really want to figure it out, even now, why they didn’t want to hire me. They did end up hiring Susan Billingsley. Remember? In ’75 or ’74. And that’s after they fired Bego. They couldn’t fire me, I wasn’t hired, I was just a swamper--but they fired Bego.
Steiger: So the way they did it then, they didn’t say, "You’re on the payroll," they said, "Bego, you’re hired, and you can have whoever you want as a swamper"?
Ote: Yeah. So I swamped those two years for him, and we worked with O.C. and we worked with John Sorweite... I liked it. But to tell you the truth, the day that I saw those little wooden boats, those dory boats--and this was probably in ’74 that I saw Regan Dale on the river in a dory, and he asked me if I wanted to hop on his boat and take it through. I said, "You bet I do!" And he let me run 60-Mile in a dory, and oh my God! I will never forget it. It was like this is what I have to do.
Steiger: So R.D. had his eye on you?
Ote: Oh, we had our eye on each other, that’s for sure. We were definitely lookin’ at each other.
Steiger: So that was the first time you’d ever seen the dories?
Ote: Uh-huh. ...Now wait, getting back to that very first early-on time. My first trip through the Grand Canyon, rowing my own boat--I have to put this down, because that was probably the turning point for me. We were working in Canyonlands and all the boatmen at Canyonlands decided to do a Grand trip that first fall that I’d worked in Green River. And there was eight guys and myself. That shows you how lopsided it was. I had my own boat, I rowed my own boat through the Grand Canyon.
Steiger: How’d that transpire?
Ote: You know, I can’t remember where I got the boat. That’s the funny part. Had we already bought McFec [Merry Christmas from Elves Chasm], our little ten-man? We might have already bought it from Ron. He was selling those old ten-mans. So anyway, I think that’s what it was. Bego had his own boat, and I had my own boat, and the other guys were sharing boats--the other eight. So I ran the whole Grand Canyon by myself. The only place I had trouble was Lava Falls. I tipped over in Lava Falls.
Steiger: Runnin’ right?
Ote: Uh-huh, went for the big swim. I’m talkin’ the Big Swim. That was the first time in my heart I felt the power of the river, because it takes you to the bottom.
Steiger: How’d that day go?
Ote: It was good, except for I really wanted somebody to hike up and run through with me, and they weren’t into it--the guys weren’t into it. We all looked at it, we all knew we had to run right. That was the only run there was then. That was the run that everybody did. There was no slot run yet. The Dories hadn’t....
Steiger: Mighta been there, but nobody knew it?
Ote: Yeah.
Steiger: Who knows what the water was, huh? Yeah, if you flipped a ten-man, it probably was real high.
Ote: It was probably high. But I just remember bein’ at the bottom of the river, all the way through that rapid.
Steiger: So you rode through with somebody, and then had to hike back up and go alone?
Ote: Yeah.
Steiger: And what were those other guys doin’?
Ote: I don’t know. I remember being kind of mad about that, that nobody would go through with me. That was the only time on that trip I remember thinkin’, "Well, those ... ding-dongs!" or whatever. Why didn’t they want to ride with me?! And then I remember it being kind of a problem getting my boat back right side up.
Steiger: I bet. Those were huge boats.
Ote: I think it went through Lower Lava... But that’s the first time I was scared for my life.
Steiger: Where’d you flip at?
Ote: "V" Wave.
Steiger: Oh, God, it must have been huge. That was ’74? And Sue Billingsley, when did she start, do you suppose?
Ote: I don’t know, you’d have to ask her.
Steiger: Yeah. That was pretty early--that really was.
Ote: It was three of us in Canyonlands, though--three of us women--which was kind of unusual. There was myself, Naho, and a gal named Penny, who showed up.
Steiger: Did you guys have a hard time gettin’ along with everybody, or how was that?
Ote: Well, for the most part, it was like A.C. Ekker would say, "Ah, women can’t row the river." And Ron would say that women can’t row the river. And Art Gallenson, I remember him kinda sayin’ women.... It wasn’t like they were really strong against it, it was just like it was a man’s world. But that’s not what my daddy told me, ‘cause I drove his tractors and did all the stuff that the boys did. I was drivin’ tractors before you could drive a car, like eleven or twelve--little kid.
Steiger: "Sue, get on there! Get goin’, we need to plow this field!"
Ote: I remember drivin’ his hay truck, barely bein’ able to reach the clutch and see over the steering wheel at the same time. Oh! that’s great!
Steiger: Were you close to him?
Ote: My dad? I loved my dad. I remember getting up to change water [i.e., irrigation] with him, or to ride on the school bus--he was the school bus driver in the winter. I remember sitting out waiting for him. He would tell me, "You can come with me if you’re up." And I would get up just so I could ride the whole way. My earliest memories. Must have been grade school.
Steiger: So you knew that this woman deal was bullshit, but the rest of the river world didn’t... It’s funny to see Norman Nevills struttin’ around in those early movies. When I look back on my early days--same thing, I started in ’72--everybody kind of strutted around quite a little bit, as I recall.
Ote: Oh, I wish Norm and Doris would have lived. They would have been the king and the queen of the river, wouldn’t they have? Dang.
Steiger: They probably would have figured a lot of things out. They didn’t have that much time to do it, really.... So there you are, you did that trip in ’74, and then what?
Ote: Well, like I told you, when I saw the dories on the river, in my heart of hearts I was goin’, "I have to row one of those boats." And then I saw those women that worked for Grand Canyon Dories, like Kenly and Sabina. Those women, to me, were just the most magnificent women. But I realized that the way they were on the river was they were cooks, which I just couldn’t see, just cooking. So when I did go to work for the Dories as a cook, I also rowed one of their gear boats.
Steiger: How’d that work?
Ote: It was a lot of work.
Steiger: I mean, did you just say, "I want to be a cook, and I want to row the raft"?
Ote: Uh-huh. And Chuck wasn’t really excited about letting me do it, but he would, ‘cause he knew I had that kind of energy. But I doubt he would let just anybody do it. I remember when Ellen Tibbetts started rowin’ the raft, she wasn’t cookin’, she was just rowin’ the raft. But it was hard. That was hard work.
Steiger: So you guys started at about the same time?
Ote: Ellen? I was running trips with Expeditions when Ellen was hiking with George Billingsley in the Grand Canyon.
Steiger: Expeditions meaning GCE?
Ote: Yeah, Grand Canyon Expeditions. But she came later. Sabina and Kenly and Anne Marie Gretch, those three women were in the dory thing before Ellen.
I have to give credit to somebody here. I have to give credit to Claire Quist, because Claire Quist was the first man to give me a real job, paying, in the Grand Canyon. To this day, he and I always talk about it, about that fact, that I was the first woman to work for him, and that he gave me my first job.
Steiger: How’d that transpire?
Ote: I was at Lee’s Ferry--that’s where I was living--and I was lookin’ for work. I didn’t care if it was paid or nonpaid. And Moki--Claire--needed a boatman, ‘cause one of his boatmen didn’t show up, and they were launching that day. I kept sayin’, "I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll row for you!" "(mutters) I don’t think a girl can [unclear]." And it was the other guys that talked him into it.
Steiger: Do you remember the year?
Ote: Let’s see, I want to say ’75. But oh, that trip was so much fun. We got to Hance Rapids, and the water was low, because they were runnin’ left. I was goin’, "I’m not goin’ over there! It’s bony!" And I remember Claire being really kinda mad at me that day.
Steiger: ‘Cause you went right to left?
Ote: I did. I went over and did the run that I knew to do in that water level.
Steiger: That’s just from motorin’?
Ote: Uh-huh. And a couple of the guys went with me and did it, too, and Claire did his usual down the shoreline on the left side. I remember him being kind of mad at me that day. And he was kinda mad at me for the rest of the trip, until I had a terrible run in Lava Falls. We ran left in Lava, and I went right over that steep....
Steiger: The domer?
Ote: Yeah, and just--oh, it was just horrible. Oars popped out and stuff. And I don’t remember the oars there, either. Were they live oars, or were they pinned still?
Steiger: I don’t know. Was it ten-mans back then? That must have been what they had, huh?
Ote: Yeah. I think they still had the rubber bumpers. Oh, they were so funky! Sorry, Claire. (laughs) But that was that. I did three trips for Claire.
Steiger: Oh, yeah, he hired you again right after that? So he must have liked you.
Ote: Yeah. It was good. And then I went to work for the Dories.
Steiger: Just rememberin’ workin’ for Claire, what sticks out as being the best part of all that--aside from gettin’ the job to begin with?
Ote: It was camaraderie, and the guys accepting me as a competent boatman, and even asking me about runs. Because I think at that time I’d probably done as many row trips privately, as some of those guys had done commercially.
Steiger: So after the first trip in ’72, so you were doing one or two training trips a year, no matter what.
Ote: Oh, yeah.
Steiger: And you were always rowin’ your own boat?
Ote: Always rowin’.
Steiger: On the hundred-day trip [with O.C. Dale, Roberta Dale, Bego, and Nels Niemi] you rowed a boat?
Ote: Oh, yes, I had my own boat. (laughs)
Steiger: Probably good for the relationship and everything, huh?
Ote: Well, the best trip that I ever did was with Regan Dale. We did a forty-day trip, him and I, in two Selways--those little, tiny, bitty-bitty boats. That was the best trip, by far. We had to test each other out. We had to make sure we could live with each other.
Steiger: So how’d that transpire? You were workin’ for the Dories, but then you and Bego split up soon after that?
Ote: We split up. And it was about six months after that, that Regan and I got together. So that would have been in ’77.
Steiger: And so right away you guys got together and then did that trip?
Ote: Yeah, it was that spring. I was cooking. I cooked for the Dories that summer. Rowin’ the raft--as often as they’d let me, not always. Sometimes I just cooked. I think I must have done three or four trips that first year with the Dories, as a cook. I changed that, too--I changed that system--‘cause they were having all those canned foods, those beef cubes and raviolis. It was Donna Catotti and I that kind of figured out a better way to feed people on the river, instead of the canned food. I would make bread sticks. It was fun. It was fun cookin’. ....My first few trips, I cooked on the fire pan.
Steiger: And that went in the dory too?
Ote: Yeah. Or on the raft. I think that firebox actually went on the raft. That was a nasty thing...
[With the Dories] I remember getting paid $250 to cook.
Steiger: For an eighteen-day trip?
Ote: Uh-huh. What was the boatman’s pay back then? Forty bucks a day? Thirty-five? If even that. I think the dory boatmen were gettin’ like $450 per trip, because I was thinkin’ that the cooks were paid pretty good. (Steiger laughs) It didn’t matter. Don’t you remember those guys, they would come into that warehouse in Hurricane and spend a week dialin’ their boat in for nothin’, and never complain.
Steiger: Never even think of it.
Ote: No. Pinstriped and....
Steiger: So that was all individual guys doin’ it?
Ote: Uh-huh.
Steiger: Okay, best trip ever?
Ote: Regan and I did that forty-day trip. That was the best trip.
Steiger: Spring, two people, two Selways.
Ote: And we both tipped over in Hermit--boom! boom!
Steiger: Was it hard to right those?
Ote: No.
Steiger: ‘Cause they were so little?
Ote: I paddled down to Regan, we got on his and righted his. He got on mine, and we righted it. We pulled in at Schist and set up the tent and dried everything out, and it started raining again. It rained on that forty day trip, twenty days. That was February, March.
Steiger: Those were the days.
Ote: We hiked out at Lava Falls, went to a meeting on the South Rim, came back in, brought his three brothers: Tim, Roger, and Peter. I loved those boys. They were fourteen, sixteen, and seventeen. That was their first experience. Might have been Roger’s second....
Steiger: So then, somewhere around in there, you got pregnant.
Ote: Yes, I did, and that was kind of a miracle. And you know what, I talk about working on personal legends--mine is pretty complete. When that happened to me--and it did happen to me--I wasn’t sure that that’s what I wanted. But I’ll tell you what, I am so glad that happened to me, because now I have two best friends, my two kids. But Duffy was a miracle. I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant--I shouldn’t have, because I had a really serious infection. And when I did get pregnant, and I went and told Regan, he was so cute that day. I walked into Gertie, that red truck of his, I told him, I said, "Regan, I have some news. I don’t know if you’ll like it. I’m pregnant." He goes, "Well, we’ll get married in October, and we’ll name the baby Duffy."
Steiger: Did you know that was gonna be his reaction?
Ote: No! And he knew how bad I wanted to row a dory--he knew. But that was that. And really and truly, Lew, there is no way I could have had an abortion. I just don’t believe in ‘em myself, personally. And that was a miracle that happened to me. It changed my life, it made me into a better person.
Steiger: So you had been hell bent on becoming a dory boatman. Did you ever get to row one before?
Ote: I rowed ‘em as often as they’d let me.
Steiger: But you didn’t get your own?
Ote: Uh-uh.
Steiger: So once you had Duffy, you were raising him. And that kind of put the damper on the river career?
Ote: I tried to go downriver after that, and it did not work. I missed him. I just so was miserable. That wasn’t right. So I just put that on hold. (fftt!) In fact, I gave it up. I gave it up. I actually gave it up. It’s just like often happens to people when you give something up, you finally go, "Ah, I’m not gonna get this." Then you get it. And I did. It was in ’85, ’86--when did the company sell? In 1987, Mike Walker, the manager of OARS and Grand Canyon Dories at the time....
Steiger: After Martin had sold the company.
Ote: Yup. Mike asked me if I’d rowed a dory, and I went, "No." He goes, "Well, do you want to?" I went, "Huh?!" It was like, "Oh, my God!"
Steiger: Good for Walker! I didn’t realize that. He was just settlin’ in, and....
Ote: He was a good guy. He believed in women. And look who was rowing then... Oh, I should say this about Ellen [Tibbetts]. That year that I was pregnant with Duffy, that summer that I birthed him, March, she rowed her first dory.
Steiger: And she was the first woman that rowed a dory for the company?
Ote: Yes, she was.
Steiger: There really was kind of a barrier there, wasn’t there?
Ote: There was a bunch of women by then in the canyon.
Steiger: Who kind of broke out by the early eighties.
Ote: Yeah, the AZRA gals.
Steiger: But those late seventies....
Ote: That was when it was happening.
Steiger: We didn’t want our cover blown yet. (laughter) Don’t you think? I mean, that’s kind of the way it seems like to me, ‘cause I remember watchin’ that same thing happen with Connie Tibbitts. She was out there fixin’ motors and doin’ all this shit, flyin’ her plane.
Ote: Flying airplanes, jumping off cliffs.
Steiger: Yeah, but it was like, "We’re not gonna let her run down the river." But she was just hell bent, and so finally Fred had to give in. I guess that was kind of the way it was at the Dories, too. So Mike Walker gave you a dory?
Ote: Yeah.
Steiger: How’d that feel?
Ote: Oh, it was so good. It was so good. I had a golden trip. Beginner’s luck.
Steiger: Okay, what boat did you row?
Ote: What boat was it? Hm--Roaring Springs.
Steiger: Oh, what a nice little boat. All wood.
Ote: All wood, and it was green at that time, Beryl green and white. Maybe that one stripe of red.
Steiger: So in the interim, you had Duffy and Alissa, and I guess by then Duffy was about, they must have been just old enough to where you could go.
Ote: Well, the thing was, then when I did start going, Regan stayed home.
Steiger: So there was always somebody there?
Ote: Yeah, he would stay with the kids.
***
I’ll tell you what’s the best for me now, is I go boating with my family. I mean, I sacrificed all those years to have those two children, but now I go boating with ‘em, and it, Lew, is the coolest, to have my son rowing and watching after me; to have my daughter rowing and watching after me. It’s unbelievable.
Steiger: Yeah, and they kinda do, too, don’t they?
Ote: They totally do. You know, I thought it would be the other way around. And it was, when they were in their teens, but not anymore. They are so competent.
Steiger: They kinda watch after everybody, not just you.
Ote: They love it. They love it too. They just absolutely love it. Duffy’s very quiet about it. And Alissa is a little me--exuberant. Whew! Duffy is Regan and ‘Lissa is Ote.
Steiger: Ah, but they’re their own people, too.
Ote: Oh, they’re totally their own people.
Steiger: I mean, I see a lot of both of you guys in each of those guys, but also it’s been fun watchin’ ‘em grow up, because they’re definitely their own people, too.
Ote: Duffy Dale rowed his first dory when he was eighteen. He’s been rowin’ for six years now, and this year was the first year he broke a dory.
Steiger: Wow, that’s pretty good.
Ote: Yeah, it is pretty good.
Steiger: I’m sure Alissa will have that same ruthless Dale concentration, too.
Ote: Yup.
Steiger: Okay, so you punched back in there about the time those guys got old enough to be more self sufficient, and you’ve been runnin’ more or less close to full seasons for the last, what, three or four years?
Ote: When the science ended, I started doin’ four to five to six trips, so it was ’95.
Steiger: So basically nine or ten years you’ve been doin’ it steady. And how old are you? [Ote: I’m fifty-six.] When you think of the guiding thing, I mean, the young guys can’t wait for us to wear out. But here you are, you’ve been doin’ it steady from age 46 to 56.
Ote: Yeah.
Steiger: That’s pretty good.
Ote: I like to say I started my Grand Canyon career when I was forty, when I turned forty.
Steiger: What’s the secret, how do you do it, how do you keep up physically?
Ote: I don’t know. I think that I eat really good, and I exercise on a pretty regular basis.
Steiger: How’s it goin’? How many more years do you think you’ve got? Are you gonna go, like Georgie [White] made it to eighty-three, and she was motorin’.
Ote: Georgie. Isn’t she great? She was motoring, yeah. Well, she started her career at forty-two, and so did Martin, by the way. But I say this to the people, "I’m gonna do this until, one, I’m hurting physically--and that’s not fun--and there’s occasions when I do hurt, when I’m tired. And not my back necessarily, but just my body is tired. And that’s when the wind blows. But if I start hurting on a regular basis, like aching or something, that would be a reason to quit. The other one is if it’s not fun anymore. You know? It’s just no fun anymore.
Steiger: It’s almost gettin’ to be more fun, though, isn’t it?
Ote: Oh! I love my job! I absolutely love my job. Guiding is just so precious. It’s like a fairy tale. You take people on a fairy tale.
Steiger: Yeah. And I think as you get older, you don’t take it so much for granted. That’s what I’m finding.
Ote: Why not do what you love for as long as you can? I mean, Martin Litton just did a trip with me this spring at, what, eighty-seven? Rowed his own boat, rowed Lava Falls. And he wants to go next spring, again.
Steiger: What should we say about your art work? How’s that evolved for you?
Ote: I love my art.
Steiger: I’ve seen you do so many things, just dash off little watercolors and give ‘em away. That’s so cool.
Ote: I give ‘em away. It’s goin’ good. It’s not something that makes me a living, but it gives me pleasure. And Regan, built a studio for me out back. I paint in the wintertime, more so than the summer. The summertime, I just do, like you said, the full sketches, and I do give ‘em away. And I love it. I love to paint. My newest project is with Roger [Dale], painting those little glass things, and then he blows them into these big beautiful painted vases.
***
Steiger: So many stories... Just tell me a little bit more about that "best" trip. Set the stage for me that day you guys flipped. What time of day?
Ote: It was midday, it was probably around noon, and we had run Granite. We’d looked at it, and then we’d run it, and it was just trashy. You know how Granite is, anyway.
Steiger: This is teens water?
Ote: Yeah. It just trashed us in our little teeny Selways. Regan and I got to the bottom and we made it.... And I remember we were rowin’ down to Hermit. He goes, "Do you want to look at Hermit?" I’m goin’, "No way!" So we went out there, and I watched him. I watched him go in, and I watched his boat go end for end. I remember standing up in my Selway--standing, ‘cause I used to do this a lot--and just throwin’ my oars forward as I went into the fifth wave. And I remember just coming right back over (laughs) upside down. And there we were, both of us, upside down, and I was laughing. I remember laughing, it was so funny. We had wetsuits, both of us, ‘so I wasn’t cold, and I was just laughing. The river was muddy, muddy, ‘cause it had been raining and raining and raining, that whole trip. It was beautiful. No footsteps anywhere--not even at Phantom. I remember getting my oar and paddling down to him, and I was laughing... I remember paddling down to him and getting on his boat and throwin’ a line and rightin’ it, then swimmin’ over to my boat and gettin’ on it and rightin’ it.
Steiger: Was he laughing too?
Ote: Yeah. Oh! it was hilarious! We were so in love, oh my gosh. Not that we aren’t still, but oh, it was really exciting. We had this tent we called the Pleasure Dome. And it was raining. The whole time it was raining.
Steiger: That??s a pretty good test, if you can go through forty days, just the two of you, and you still called it the Pleasure Dome, instead of the "Dome from Hell." (laughs)
Ote: You know, it was back when he was like so--he was into his Top Con [?] camera and photographing. I remember at President Harding we were camped up on a sand dune, and I remember him getting up in the morning and sticking his head out of the Pleasure Dome and looking at the light. I remember him jumping up, grabbing his camera, butt ass naked, haulin’ around the tent, runnin’ down the beach to take this picture. We still have this picture, and it is--in fact, I’ve painted this picture as a watercolor, and it’s a beautiful painting. But, butt ass naked, to take this picture... Remember when those big sand dunes used to come out? I don’t think they’re even there anymore, but.... downstream, with the light. Oh!

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I was raised in West Jordan, Utah. My father and mother were dirt farmers, meaning we grew crops. And that’s probably where I got most of my energy that I have--that people accuse me of having--is from my father, getting up very early in the morning, and helping him change the water.
Steiger: What kind of crops did you grow?
Ote: Peas and corn and tomatoes and alfalfa--lots of alfalfa. Dry farming wheat and rye.
Steiger: How many brothers and sisters?
Ote: My older brother is four years older--Dennis. He was the truck person at Kennicott Copper, ran all the trucks, made sure they didn’t bump into each other. My sister, two years older, DeeAnn, she’s a realtor in Salt Lake City--very wealthy. My brother was the farmer, ended up farming with my father, ‘til my father died. And they actually sold their farm and went to Idaho. And myself, I ended up in college for a couple of years before I ran the river.
Steiger: What were you doing in college?
Ote: Trying to figure out what to be, trying to work on my personal legend, which I couldn’t find in college. So I started skiing and hiking, backpacking, ended up spending two summers in the Canadian Rockies, and then ended up on the river. Do you know Pete Gibbs? Pete Gibbs was the guy that made the Gibbs Ascender and sold it to the government and made a kajillion dollars. He worked for Grand Canyon Expeditions as a guide. He asked me and Bego [George Gerhardt], who I was with at the time, to go on a river trip, I think the year was 1972. The reason I can date that is because of Regan, because I met Regan that spring--March of 1972--at that little camp across the street from Deer Creek. Regan said that was his second year, and he started in ’71. Pete Gibbs asked Bego to climb the Grapevine Wall, and he asked if I could come along. So Pete told me I could go if I cooked for ‘em. And that very first night, I was cookin’ spaghetti down in the sand, stirrin’, and the wind was blowin’. And every time I would open the lid, sand would go in. So I served the spaghetti that night, and I was fired! I didn’t have to cook the rest of the trip!
Steiger: Now, the Grapevine Wall, meaning...?
Ote: That big granite dike. You run the rapid, and right below is that big dike on the right--huge Zoroaster dike. I spent two nights, three days, in the rocks, watching those guys climb it. It was mostly a bolting thing. Did I want to do it? No. Looked horrendous.
It was just the four of us: myself, Pete Gibbs, Bego, and one other guy. It was one little ten-man raft. Remember the ten-man rafts? I learned how to row on that trip.
Steiger: Wait a minute, the whole trip was one little ten-man raft? In March of 1972?
Ote: Yes.
Steiger: So how many other people did you see on that trip?
Ote: Well, we ran into the GCE trip down at Deer Creek. I think that was the only trip we ran into. That was early--that was an early trip for a commercial trip.
Steiger: So there were four of you, a ten-man raft, and you did this river trip just so those guys could climb the Grapevine Wall?
Ote: And I got to see the Grand Canyon for the first time! I think we did twelve days, counting the three days that we were there. So it was (indicates swift rush) through the canyon. There was no hiking.
Steiger: You went down there, climbed the wall ...
Ote: ... ran the river ...
Steiger: ... boated out. And you were fired as the cook on Day One! Not bad! So who did the cookin’ then?
Ote: Pete. He was the guide. Do you believe that? My first river trip, I had an actual commercial guide. He was a really good boatman. I never remember being scared at anything. I don’t even remember getting wet. It was cold. We didn’t have all that Patagonia gear yet. I remember being so blown away by the Grand Canyon, being so amazed that Pete Gibbs did it for a living, that he guided people through that canyon. I said, "This is what I want to do," and I quit college.
Steiger: What had you been studying?
Ote: Philosophy, education, party--serious party.
Steiger: Oh, yeah! 1972.
Ote: I was the party queen! I remember putting a big Agnew face on the clock. We were demonstrating against Nixon and that whole thing, and the Vietnam War.
Steiger: But growing up on a farm, your folks must have been pretty conservative.
Ote: My folks were very conservative. I was raised a Mormon, and at sixteen I decided I wasn’t going to be a Mormon, but I didn’t tell my parents that. I did know that I was not going to be that. They just didn’t answer the geological questions. They didn’t answer the dinosaurs. They didn’t give it to me straight, and I was like, "Something’s not right here." Went to college, took philosophy, read Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche, all those guys, and completely became--I think I was an atheist. Now I’m a pagan.
Steiger: It was geology that actually started you questioning your religion?
Ote: Somewhere I went to a museum and saw dinosaurs. I went, "Dinosaurs! Wow, they lived how many years ago, and what are they trying to tell me in this religion?" So it just didn’t work. Plus, when I went to college, I was drinkin’. Now, you can’t drink and be a Mormon--and a few other things.
Steiger: I guess not. I guess you’re goin’ to hell for sure if you do that.
Ote: Yeah. So my parents did not know, no. I tried to keep them in the dark about my wicked ways, but they finally figured it out. And they didn’t pay for my college after they figured it out. So I had to figure out what I was going to do to support myself. College wasn’t it.
Steiger: So what did you decide?
Ote: Well, I was with Bego at the time, so we moved to Moab, and we got a job with Grand Canyon Expeditions and Canyonlands--ran triple-rigs and sport-yak trips up on Desolation.
Steiger: This was after the Grand Canyon trip?
Ote: Yeah. We both wanted to be river runners. Bingo! Just like that. "This is what we’re gonna do." And we did it. That summer we went to work for Ron Smith and Canyonlands.
Steiger: So that was the summer of ’72? What was it like gettin’ a job with Ron Smith? Was that hard?
Ote: Ron Smith didn’t hire me--he never hired me. I worked for A.C. Ekker. I packed food and drove trucks and painted boats and swamped. Whenever I did a trip, it was swamping, except for in Desolation Canyon, where they hired me as a guide to take people through in those little sport-yaks. And that was probably the funnest year of guiding, because every single person has a boat, and you get to teach ‘em how to row, how to right ‘em, how to swim, all that. So much fun. I worked with a guy--what was his name?--Anderson! Naho Dockletts, and Bego. That’s how we got our names, the three of us. Naho is O.C. Dale’s sister, Debra Dale. N-A-H-O. We were on a trip together in Desolation Canyon with a bunch of people, and I read ‘em the story--the Navajo creation story--and in it there’s Begochiti, Naho Dockletts, and Coyote. And at the end of the story, the people decided that I was "Coyote", the trickster; Bego--George Gerhardt--was "Bego"--Begochiti; and Debra Dale was gonna be "Naho" Dockletts. And by the end of the trip, they’d shortened our names to Ote, Bego, and Naho, and those names stuck. From then on, that’s who we were. And that’s who they are now. He’s still Bego and she’s still Naho and I’m still Ote.
Steiger: So on that first trip, if we could go back to Grand Canyon, you met Regan across from Deer Creek?
Ote: Yeah, he was with Kent Vigas and he was running his own boat. It was his second season. What happened there? Oh, we just met. That’s about it. I was with somebody else, and he was with somebody else, I believe.
***
Steiger: So just tell me more about what sticks out for you about your early career and how that went.
Ote: I remember wanting to live in the Grand Canyon. That was all I wanted to do. And so that winter we did a trip with The Factor, Kenton Grua. We had two boats this time, and there were four of us: myself and Bego, and Foxy--remember Foxy?--and Kenton Grua, The Factor. We went through the Grand Canyon at Christmastime. Spent Christmas at Elves Chasm, and New Year’s Eve at Lava Falls.
Steiger: That’s winter of ’72-’73? And those guys were all workin’ for GCE?
Ote: Uh-huh, that’s how we knew each other. We’d met each other either in Canyonlands or in the Grand Canyon. That next summer, I swamped, I think it was eleven trips for Grand Canyon Expeditions, and learned how to run a motor rig--wanted my own motor rig--but they weren’t gonna hire me.
Steiger: How come?
Ote: You know, I never did figure that out, and I don’t really want to figure it out, even now, why they didn’t want to hire me. They did end up hiring Susan Billingsley. Remember? In ’75 or ’74. And that’s after they fired Bego. They couldn’t fire me, I wasn’t hired, I was just a swamper--but they fired Bego.
Steiger: So the way they did it then, they didn’t say, "You’re on the payroll," they said, "Bego, you’re hired, and you can have whoever you want as a swamper"?
Ote: Yeah. So I swamped those two years for him, and we worked with O.C. and we worked with John Sorweite... I liked it. But to tell you the truth, the day that I saw those little wooden boats, those dory boats--and this was probably in ’74 that I saw Regan Dale on the river in a dory, and he asked me if I wanted to hop on his boat and take it through. I said, "You bet I do!" And he let me run 60-Mile in a dory, and oh my God! I will never forget it. It was like this is what I have to do.
Steiger: So R.D. had his eye on you?
Ote: Oh, we had our eye on each other, that’s for sure. We were definitely lookin’ at each other.
Steiger: So that was the first time you’d ever seen the dories?
Ote: Uh-huh. ...Now wait, getting back to that very first early-on time. My first trip through the Grand Canyon, rowing my own boat--I have to put this down, because that was probably the turning point for me. We were working in Canyonlands and all the boatmen at Canyonlands decided to do a Grand trip that first fall that I’d worked in Green River. And there was eight guys and myself. That shows you how lopsided it was. I had my own boat, I rowed my own boat through the Grand Canyon.
Steiger: How’d that transpire?
Ote: You know, I can’t remember where I got the boat. That’s the funny part. Had we already bought McFec [Merry Christmas from Elves Chasm], our little ten-man? We might have already bought it from Ron. He was selling those old ten-mans. So anyway, I think that’s what it was. Bego had his own boat, and I had my own boat, and the other guys were sharing boats--the other eight. So I ran the whole Grand Canyon by myself. The only place I had trouble was Lava Falls. I tipped over in Lava Falls.
Steiger: Runnin’ right?
Ote: Uh-huh, went for the big swim. I’m talkin’ the Big Swim. That was the first time in my heart I felt the power of the river, because it takes you to the bottom.
Steiger: How’d that day go?
Ote: It was good, except for I really wanted somebody to hike up and run through with me, and they weren’t into it--the guys weren’t into it. We all looked at it, we all knew we had to run right. That was the only run there was then. That was the run that everybody did. There was no slot run yet. The Dories hadn’t....
Steiger: Mighta been there, but nobody knew it?
Ote: Yeah.
Steiger: Who knows what the water was, huh? Yeah, if you flipped a ten-man, it probably was real high.
Ote: It was probably high. But I just remember bein’ at the bottom of the river, all the way through that rapid.
Steiger: So you rode through with somebody, and then had to hike back up and go alone?
Ote: Yeah.
Steiger: And what were those other guys doin’?
Ote: I don’t know. I remember being kind of mad about that, that nobody would go through with me. That was the only time on that trip I remember thinkin’, "Well, those ... ding-dongs!" or whatever. Why didn’t they want to ride with me?! And then I remember it being kind of a problem getting my boat back right side up.
Steiger: I bet. Those were huge boats.
Ote: I think it went through Lower Lava... But that’s the first time I was scared for my life.
Steiger: Where’d you flip at?
Ote: "V" Wave.
Steiger: Oh, God, it must have been huge. That was ’74? And Sue Billingsley, when did she start, do you suppose?
Ote: I don’t know, you’d have to ask her.
Steiger: Yeah. That was pretty early--that really was.
Ote: It was three of us in Canyonlands, though--three of us women--which was kind of unusual. There was myself, Naho, and a gal named Penny, who showed up.
Steiger: Did you guys have a hard time gettin’ along with everybody, or how was that?
Ote: Well, for the most part, it was like A.C. Ekker would say, "Ah, women can’t row the river." And Ron would say that women can’t row the river. And Art Gallenson, I remember him kinda sayin’ women.... It wasn’t like they were really strong against it, it was just like it was a man’s world. But that’s not what my daddy told me, ‘cause I drove his tractors and did all the stuff that the boys did. I was drivin’ tractors before you could drive a car, like eleven or twelve--little kid.
Steiger: "Sue, get on there! Get goin’, we need to plow this field!"
Ote: I remember drivin’ his hay truck, barely bein’ able to reach the clutch and see over the steering wheel at the same time. Oh! that’s great!
Steiger: Were you close to him?
Ote: My dad? I loved my dad. I remember getting up to change water [i.e., irrigation] with him, or to ride on the school bus--he was the school bus driver in the winter. I remember sitting out waiting for him. He would tell me, "You can come with me if you’re up." And I would get up just so I could ride the whole way. My earliest memories. Must have been grade school.
Steiger: So you knew that this woman deal was bullshit, but the rest of the river world didn’t... It’s funny to see Norman Nevills struttin’ around in those early movies. When I look back on my early days--same thing, I started in ’72--everybody kind of strutted around quite a little bit, as I recall.
Ote: Oh, I wish Norm and Doris would have lived. They would have been the king and the queen of the river, wouldn’t they have? Dang.
Steiger: They probably would have figured a lot of things out. They didn’t have that much time to do it, really.... So there you are, you did that trip in ’74, and then what?
Ote: Well, like I told you, when I saw the dories on the river, in my heart of hearts I was goin’, "I have to row one of those boats." And then I saw those women that worked for Grand Canyon Dories, like Kenly and Sabina. Those women, to me, were just the most magnificent women. But I realized that the way they were on the river was they were cooks, which I just couldn’t see, just cooking. So when I did go to work for the Dories as a cook, I also rowed one of their gear boats.
Steiger: How’d that work?
Ote: It was a lot of work.
Steiger: I mean, did you just say, "I want to be a cook, and I want to row the raft"?
Ote: Uh-huh. And Chuck wasn’t really excited about letting me do it, but he would, ‘cause he knew I had that kind of energy. But I doubt he would let just anybody do it. I remember when Ellen Tibbetts started rowin’ the raft, she wasn’t cookin’, she was just rowin’ the raft. But it was hard. That was hard work.
Steiger: So you guys started at about the same time?
Ote: Ellen? I was running trips with Expeditions when Ellen was hiking with George Billingsley in the Grand Canyon.
Steiger: Expeditions meaning GCE?
Ote: Yeah, Grand Canyon Expeditions. But she came later. Sabina and Kenly and Anne Marie Gretch, those three women were in the dory thing before Ellen.
I have to give credit to somebody here. I have to give credit to Claire Quist, because Claire Quist was the first man to give me a real job, paying, in the Grand Canyon. To this day, he and I always talk about it, about that fact, that I was the first woman to work for him, and that he gave me my first job.
Steiger: How’d that transpire?
Ote: I was at Lee’s Ferry--that’s where I was living--and I was lookin’ for work. I didn’t care if it was paid or nonpaid. And Moki--Claire--needed a boatman, ‘cause one of his boatmen didn’t show up, and they were launching that day. I kept sayin’, "I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll row for you!" "(mutters) I don’t think a girl can [unclear]." And it was the other guys that talked him into it.
Steiger: Do you remember the year?
Ote: Let’s see, I want to say ’75. But oh, that trip was so much fun. We got to Hance Rapids, and the water was low, because they were runnin’ left. I was goin’, "I’m not goin’ over there! It’s bony!" And I remember Claire being really kinda mad at me that day.
Steiger: ‘Cause you went right to left?
Ote: I did. I went over and did the run that I knew to do in that water level.
Steiger: That’s just from motorin’?
Ote: Uh-huh. And a couple of the guys went with me and did it, too, and Claire did his usual down the shoreline on the left side. I remember him being kind of mad at me that day. And he was kinda mad at me for the rest of the trip, until I had a terrible run in Lava Falls. We ran left in Lava, and I went right over that steep....
Steiger: The domer?
Ote: Yeah, and just--oh, it was just horrible. Oars popped out and stuff. And I don’t remember the oars there, either. Were they live oars, or were they pinned still?
Steiger: I don’t know. Was it ten-mans back then? That must have been what they had, huh?
Ote: Yeah. I think they still had the rubber bumpers. Oh, they were so funky! Sorry, Claire. (laughs) But that was that. I did three trips for Claire.
Steiger: Oh, yeah, he hired you again right after that? So he must have liked you.
Ote: Yeah. It was good. And then I went to work for the Dories.
Steiger: Just rememberin’ workin’ for Claire, what sticks out as being the best part of all that--aside from gettin’ the job to begin with?
Ote: It was camaraderie, and the guys accepting me as a competent boatman, and even asking me about runs. Because I think at that time I’d probably done as many row trips privately, as some of those guys had done commercially.
Steiger: So after the first trip in ’72, so you were doing one or two training trips a year, no matter what.
Ote: Oh, yeah.
Steiger: And you were always rowin’ your own boat?
Ote: Always rowin’.
Steiger: On the hundred-day trip [with O.C. Dale, Roberta Dale, Bego, and Nels Niemi] you rowed a boat?
Ote: Oh, yes, I had my own boat. (laughs)
Steiger: Probably good for the relationship and everything, huh?
Ote: Well, the best trip that I ever did was with Regan Dale. We did a forty-day trip, him and I, in two Selways--those little, tiny, bitty-bitty boats. That was the best trip, by far. We had to test each other out. We had to make sure we could live with each other.
Steiger: So how’d that transpire? You were workin’ for the Dories, but then you and Bego split up soon after that?
Ote: We split up. And it was about six months after that, that Regan and I got together. So that would have been in ’77.
Steiger: And so right away you guys got together and then did that trip?
Ote: Yeah, it was that spring. I was cooking. I cooked for the Dories that summer. Rowin’ the raft--as often as they’d let me, not always. Sometimes I just cooked. I think I must have done three or four trips that first year with the Dories, as a cook. I changed that, too--I changed that system--‘cause they were having all those canned foods, those beef cubes and raviolis. It was Donna Catotti and I that kind of figured out a better way to feed people on the river, instead of the canned food. I would make bread sticks. It was fun. It was fun cookin’. ....My first few trips, I cooked on the fire pan.
Steiger: And that went in the dory too?
Ote: Yeah. Or on the raft. I think that firebox actually went on the raft. That was a nasty thing...
[With the Dories] I remember getting paid $250 to cook.
Steiger: For an eighteen-day trip?
Ote: Uh-huh. What was the boatman’s pay back then? Forty bucks a day? Thirty-five? If even that. I think the dory boatmen were gettin’ like $450 per trip, because I was thinkin’ that the cooks were paid pretty good. (Steiger laughs) It didn’t matter. Don’t you remember those guys, they would come into that warehouse in Hurricane and spend a week dialin’ their boat in for nothin’, and never complain.
Steiger: Never even think of it.
Ote: No. Pinstriped and....
Steiger: So that was all individual guys doin’ it?
Ote: Uh-huh.
Steiger: Okay, best trip ever?
Ote: Regan and I did that forty-day trip. That was the best trip.
Steiger: Spring, two people, two Selways.
Ote: And we both tipped over in Hermit--boom! boom!
Steiger: Was it hard to right those?
Ote: No.
Steiger: ‘Cause they were so little?
Ote: I paddled down to Regan, we got on his and righted his. He got on mine, and we righted it. We pulled in at Schist and set up the tent and dried everything out, and it started raining again. It rained on that forty day trip, twenty days. That was February, March.
Steiger: Those were the days.
Ote: We hiked out at Lava Falls, went to a meeting on the South Rim, came back in, brought his three brothers: Tim, Roger, and Peter. I loved those boys. They were fourteen, sixteen, and seventeen. That was their first experience. Might have been Roger’s second....
Steiger: So then, somewhere around in there, you got pregnant.
Ote: Yes, I did, and that was kind of a miracle. And you know what, I talk about working on personal legends--mine is pretty complete. When that happened to me--and it did happen to me--I wasn’t sure that that’s what I wanted. But I’ll tell you what, I am so glad that happened to me, because now I have two best friends, my two kids. But Duffy was a miracle. I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant--I shouldn’t have, because I had a really serious infection. And when I did get pregnant, and I went and told Regan, he was so cute that day. I walked into Gertie, that red truck of his, I told him, I said, "Regan, I have some news. I don’t know if you’ll like it. I’m pregnant." He goes, "Well, we’ll get married in October, and we’ll name the baby Duffy."
Steiger: Did you know that was gonna be his reaction?
Ote: No! And he knew how bad I wanted to row a dory--he knew. But that was that. And really and truly, Lew, there is no way I could have had an abortion. I just don’t believe in ‘em myself, personally. And that was a miracle that happened to me. It changed my life, it made me into a better person.
Steiger: So you had been hell bent on becoming a dory boatman. Did you ever get to row one before?
Ote: I rowed ‘em as often as they’d let me.
Steiger: But you didn’t get your own?
Ote: Uh-uh.
Steiger: So once you had Duffy, you were raising him. And that kind of put the damper on the river career?
Ote: I tried to go downriver after that, and it did not work. I missed him. I just so was miserable. That wasn’t right. So I just put that on hold. (fftt!) In fact, I gave it up. I gave it up. I actually gave it up. It’s just like often happens to people when you give something up, you finally go, "Ah, I’m not gonna get this." Then you get it. And I did. It was in ’85, ’86--when did the company sell? In 1987, Mike Walker, the manager of OARS and Grand Canyon Dories at the time....
Steiger: After Martin had sold the company.
Ote: Yup. Mike asked me if I’d rowed a dory, and I went, "No." He goes, "Well, do you want to?" I went, "Huh?!" It was like, "Oh, my God!"
Steiger: Good for Walker! I didn’t realize that. He was just settlin’ in, and....
Ote: He was a good guy. He believed in women. And look who was rowing then... Oh, I should say this about Ellen [Tibbetts]. That year that I was pregnant with Duffy, that summer that I birthed him, March, she rowed her first dory.
Steiger: And she was the first woman that rowed a dory for the company?
Ote: Yes, she was.
Steiger: There really was kind of a barrier there, wasn’t there?
Ote: There was a bunch of women by then in the canyon.
Steiger: Who kind of broke out by the early eighties.
Ote: Yeah, the AZRA gals.
Steiger: But those late seventies....
Ote: That was when it was happening.
Steiger: We didn’t want our cover blown yet. (laughter) Don’t you think? I mean, that’s kind of the way it seems like to me, ‘cause I remember watchin’ that same thing happen with Connie Tibbitts. She was out there fixin’ motors and doin’ all this shit, flyin’ her plane.
Ote: Flying airplanes, jumping off cliffs.
Steiger: Yeah, but it was like, "We’re not gonna let her run down the river." But she was just hell bent, and so finally Fred had to give in. I guess that was kind of the way it was at the Dories, too. So Mike Walker gave you a dory?
Ote: Yeah.
Steiger: How’d that feel?
Ote: Oh, it was so good. It was so good. I had a golden trip. Beginner’s luck.
Steiger: Okay, what boat did you row?
Ote: What boat was it? Hm--Roaring Springs.
Steiger: Oh, what a nice little boat. All wood.
Ote: All wood, and it was green at that time, Beryl green and white. Maybe that one stripe of red.
Steiger: So in the interim, you had Duffy and Alissa, and I guess by then Duffy was about, they must have been just old enough to where you could go.
Ote: Well, the thing was, then when I did start going, Regan stayed home.
Steiger: So there was always somebody there?
Ote: Yeah, he would stay with the kids.
***
I’ll tell you what’s the best for me now, is I go boating with my family. I mean, I sacrificed all those years to have those two children, but now I go boating with ‘em, and it, Lew, is the coolest, to have my son rowing and watching after me; to have my daughter rowing and watching after me. It’s unbelievable.
Steiger: Yeah, and they kinda do, too, don’t they?
Ote: They totally do. You know, I thought it would be the other way around. And it was, when they were in their teens, but not anymore. They are so competent.
Steiger: They kinda watch after everybody, not just you.
Ote: They love it. They love it too. They just absolutely love it. Duffy’s very quiet about it. And Alissa is a little me--exuberant. Whew! Duffy is Regan and ‘Lissa is Ote.
Steiger: Ah, but they’re their own people, too.
Ote: Oh, they’re totally their own people.
Steiger: I mean, I see a lot of both of you guys in each of those guys, but also it’s been fun watchin’ ‘em grow up, because they’re definitely their own people, too.
Ote: Duffy Dale rowed his first dory when he was eighteen. He’s been rowin’ for six years now, and this year was the first year he broke a dory.
Steiger: Wow, that’s pretty good.
Ote: Yeah, it is pretty good.
Steiger: I’m sure Alissa will have that same ruthless Dale concentration, too.
Ote: Yup.
Steiger: Okay, so you punched back in there about the time those guys got old enough to be more self sufficient, and you’ve been runnin’ more or less close to full seasons for the last, what, three or four years?
Ote: When the science ended, I started doin’ four to five to six trips, so it was ’95.
Steiger: So basically nine or ten years you’ve been doin’ it steady. And how old are you? [Ote: I’m fifty-six.] When you think of the guiding thing, I mean, the young guys can’t wait for us to wear out. But here you are, you’ve been doin’ it steady from age 46 to 56.
Ote: Yeah.
Steiger: That’s pretty good.
Ote: I like to say I started my Grand Canyon career when I was forty, when I turned forty.
Steiger: What’s the secret, how do you do it, how do you keep up physically?
Ote: I don’t know. I think that I eat really good, and I exercise on a pretty regular basis.
Steiger: How’s it goin’? How many more years do you think you’ve got? Are you gonna go, like Georgie [White] made it to eighty-three, and she was motorin’.
Ote: Georgie. Isn’t she great? She was motoring, yeah. Well, she started her career at forty-two, and so did Martin, by the way. But I say this to the people, "I’m gonna do this until, one, I’m hurting physically--and that’s not fun--and there’s occasions when I do hurt, when I’m tired. And not my back necessarily, but just my body is tired. And that’s when the wind blows. But if I start hurting on a regular basis, like aching or something, that would be a reason to quit. The other one is if it’s not fun anymore. You know? It’s just no fun anymore.
Steiger: It’s almost gettin’ to be more fun, though, isn’t it?
Ote: Oh! I love my job! I absolutely love my job. Guiding is just so precious. It’s like a fairy tale. You take people on a fairy tale.
Steiger: Yeah. And I think as you get older, you don’t take it so much for granted. That’s what I’m finding.
Ote: Why not do what you love for as long as you can? I mean, Martin Litton just did a trip with me this spring at, what, eighty-seven? Rowed his own boat, rowed Lava Falls. And he wants to go next spring, again.
Steiger: What should we say about your art work? How’s that evolved for you?
Ote: I love my art.
Steiger: I’ve seen you do so many things, just dash off little watercolors and give ‘em away. That’s so cool.
Ote: I give ‘em away. It’s goin’ good. It’s not something that makes me a living, but it gives me pleasure. And Regan, built a studio for me out back. I paint in the wintertime, more so than the summer. The summertime, I just do, like you said, the full sketches, and I do give ‘em away. And I love it. I love to paint. My newest project is with Roger [Dale], painting those little glass things, and then he blows them into these big beautiful painted vases.
***
Steiger: So many stories... Just tell me a little bit more about that "best" trip. Set the stage for me that day you guys flipped. What time of day?
Ote: It was midday, it was probably around noon, and we had run Granite. We’d looked at it, and then we’d run it, and it was just trashy. You know how Granite is, anyway.
Steiger: This is teens water?
Ote: Yeah. It just trashed us in our little teeny Selways. Regan and I got to the bottom and we made it.... And I remember we were rowin’ down to Hermit. He goes, "Do you want to look at Hermit?" I’m goin’, "No way!" So we went out there, and I watched him. I watched him go in, and I watched his boat go end for end. I remember standing up in my Selway--standing, ‘cause I used to do this a lot--and just throwin’ my oars forward as I went into the fifth wave. And I remember just coming right back over (laughs) upside down. And there we were, both of us, upside down, and I was laughing. I remember laughing, it was so funny. We had wetsuits, both of us, ‘so I wasn’t cold, and I was just laughing. The river was muddy, muddy, ‘cause it had been raining and raining and raining, that whole trip. It was beautiful. No footsteps anywhere--not even at Phantom. I remember getting my oar and paddling down to him, and I was laughing... I remember paddling down to him and getting on his boat and throwin’ a line and rightin’ it, then swimmin’ over to my boat and gettin’ on it and rightin’ it.
Steiger: Was he laughing too?
Ote: Yeah. Oh! it was hilarious! We were so in love, oh my gosh. Not that we aren’t still, but oh, it was really exciting. We had this tent we called the Pleasure Dome. And it was raining. The whole time it was raining.
Steiger: That??s a pretty good test, if you can go through forty days, just the two of you, and you still called it the Pleasure Dome, instead of the "Dome from Hell." (laughs)
Ote: You know, it was back when he was like so--he was into his Top Con [?] camera and photographing. I remember at President Harding we were camped up on a sand dune, and I remember him getting up in the morning and sticking his head out of the Pleasure Dome and looking at the light. I remember him jumping up, grabbing his camera, butt ass naked, haulin’ around the tent, runnin’ down the beach to take this picture. We still have this picture, and it is--in fact, I’ve painted this picture as a watercolor, and it’s a beautiful painting. But, butt ass naked, to take this picture... Remember when those big sand dunes used to come out? I don’t think they’re even there anymore, but.... downstream, with the light. Oh!